Experts estimate that more than 47,000 people died in Europe as a result of high temperatures in 2023, the world’s hottest year since records began. The international research group also notes that there appears to be an adaptation to the heat.
The corresponding modeling study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health was published in the journal Nature Medicine. The team used mortality data from the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) on 96 million deaths to estimate the heat-related mortality burden in 2023 for 823 regions in 35 European countries, including Austria.
According to these estimates, there were 47,690 heat-related deaths in Europe last year. This is the second highest death rate since such calculations began in 2015, with the highest death rate expected in 2022.
Greece, Bulgaria and Italy in the top 3
Taking population into account, the research group found that the countries with the highest heat-related death rates are in Southern Europe: Greece (393 deaths per million inhabitants), Bulgaria (229), Italy (209) and Spain (175). the top four places of estimate. In Germany, this figure was 76 deaths in 2023 and in Austria 54 deaths per million inhabitants.
In absolute figures, the research group estimates the number of heat-related deaths in 2023 at almost 12,750 in Italy, followed by 8,352 in Spain and 6,376 in Germany. In Austria, the number was 486 heat-related deaths. In this country – as in almost all countries studied – more women than men died from the effects of heat, to which the elderly were particularly susceptible.
The team led by Elisa Gallo from Barcelona now also modelled the effects of heat-related mortality without climate adaptation measures. These include, for example, improvements in health care, social protection and lifestyle, progress in occupational and physical health, greater risk awareness and more effective communication and early warning strategies.
Social adaptation processes have saved many lives
The research team estimates that without these measures, heat-related mortality could likely be 80 percent higher in the general population and more than 100 percent higher in the population aged 80 and older by 2023. “Our results show that there have been social adaptation processes to the high temperatures of this century that have dramatically reduced the heat-related vulnerability and mortality burden of recent summers, especially among older adults,” lead author Gallo said in a statement.
This is consistent with the fact that the minimum mortality temperature – the optimum temperature with the lowest risk of death – has been gradually increasing across the continent since 2000, Gallo says, from 15 degrees Celsius in the period 2000 to 2004 to 17.7 degrees Celsius in the period 2015 to 2019. “This suggests that we are less vulnerable to heat than we were at the beginning of the century, likely due to general socioeconomic progress, improvements in individual behavior, and public health measures such as the heat prevention plans implemented after the record summer of 2003.”
The same research group recently presented ‘Forecaster.health’, an online early warning system that provides predictions on the risk of death related to cold and heat, by sex and age for 580 regions in 31 European countries. The free tool provides predictions up to 15 days ahead and is not only based on meteorological data, but also incorporates epidemiological models.
Source: Krone
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